Student Profiles

Current MA Students in Africana Studies

Amara Green

2016 MA Student

Amara Green is a second year MA student in Africana Studies with a concentration in Museum Studies. She recently received her bachelors degree from UCLA in World arts and Cultures, and African American Studies. Her research interests focus in examining the role of creative and artistic expression in fostering dialogue surrounding the nuanced experiences of African Diasporic life. Amara is specifically interested in cultural memory and the use of the body within film, photography and other visual arts among Black artists. She is also interested in examining the impacts of arts education, and the role of museums and cultural organizations in communities of color.

Marika Joyce Hashimoto

2016 MA Student

Marika Joyce Hashimoto is a second year graduate student in the dual degree program for Africana Studies and Library & Information Science. She graduated with a BA in Black Studies from Amherst College in 2006, and is a recipient of the Edward Jones Prize for her thesis on Ndebele architecture, which focused on the role of women and art in post-apartheid South Africa. Marika is interested in studies about the African diaspora in comparison to black American identity. She recently moved back to the US after 10 years in Japan, where she became interested in the West Indian, African, and Afropean communities of Tokyo. In 2013 she founded Diaspora Links, a community library which continues to hold events and workshops for Japanese and international residents of Japan. In her research, she hopes to study youth identities with regard to bilingual/bicultural identity, the politics of migration, and media representations of women and LGBT people of color. She is a member of the Public History Collective at CUNY and is interested in digital archiving projects which preserve oral histories and promote cultural visibility

Aleesa Mann

2017 MA Student

Aleesa Mann is an incoming master’s students in the Global Journalism and Africana Studies program. She graduated from Howard University with a BA in journalism, and has worked professionally as a journalist and served a three-year Peace Corps service as a teacher in Mozambique. Her interests include storytelling, new media and the intersection of both in proliferating voices and histories of the African Diaspora.

Takako Sakamoto

2017 MA Student

Takako Sakamoto is a first year M.A. student in Africana Studies with a concentration in Museum Studies. After receiving a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology/ Archaeology from San Francisco State University, she worked at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles as a volunteer gallery guide, research library assistant, and administration staff. Her passion to promote and support artists of color had led her to work with prominent assemblage artists and to help archiving of immense black cinema poster collection for a private collector in order to preserve the legacy of black entertainers of the 20th century. In 2015 and 2016, she co-curated two photography exhibitions, Breaking the Color Line and Beyond: African Americans in Sports and Entertainment at the El Tranquilo Gallery and African American Civil Rights Movement in L.A. at the Museum of Social Justice in Downtown, Los Angeles. Through her studies, she will examine the role which institutionalized racism plays in major art museums and how inclusion of works by artists of color will impact the diverse communities domestically and globally.

Symphonie Swift

2016 MA Student

Symphonie Swift is a second year master’s student in Global Journalism and Africana Studies. She received a bachelor’s of arts in International and Area Studies with minors in African Studies and Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. After completing her studies, Symphonie went on to lead undergraduate students abroad in multiple educational trips to Tanzania. She has also served as a teaching and research fellow for the University of Oklahoma College of International Studies and worked as the Manager of Global Expansion for Arrow Global Capital, a small impact investing intermediary. Her main research interest at this time is the perception, portrayal and misunderstanding of Africa and the diaspora in development and aid outreach and marketing.

Hayley Wagner

2015 MA Student

Hayley Wagner is a MA student who holds Bachelor's Degrees in Anthropology, French, and Human Rights from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her research interests are primarily focused on gendered health care practices, maternal health, and body politics in francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. On a 2012 trip to Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa with SMU's Embrey Human Rights Program, Hayley researched the effects of Female Genital Mutilation on women of reproductive age and created a report on grassroots efforts to curb the practice in Northeastern Uganda. Her domestic research consisted of an ethnographic study of Congolese immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and their perceptions of self-identity and medical "deservingness" with regard to individual experiences with health care in Texas. This research resulted in a presentation at the Mid-America Humanities Conference in 2014 as well as an Anthropology thesis entitled "Une Nouvelle Vie: Health Care and Identity of Congolese Immigrants in Texas" (2014). Through further research and travel, Hayley's goal is to examine the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality related to health care practices and use this knowledge to work with local non-profits advocating for reform for women's medicine.

Africana MA Alumni

Over the last decade The Africana Studies Program has graduated an impressive group of scholars, educators and cultural workers. Below is a list of these graduates and their current positions.

Class of 2017

Marie Therese Antony

Erin Gaede

Rachel Klein

Nayo Sasaki-Picou

Class of 2016

Ja’nell Ajani

Mercedes Drew

Shaida Escoffrey

Santeka Grigley

Ayanna Legros

Donasia Tillery

Class of 2015

Jamiles Lartey, Glo-Jo Journalism/Africana Studies; Lost Children of the Living: The rise of the Ghanaian Orphanage in a Neoliberal World; will be working full-time with The Guardianon a long-term project tracking police violence

Lauren Morton, Glo-Jo Journalism/ Africana Studies;This Woman’s Work: The Perils of Childbirth in New York City; is an associate producer at CNN, working on the Ashleigh Banfield show and New Day Weekend